Dean, Anthony Mason Professor, Scientia Professor

Contact details

Brief overview

George Williams AO is the Dean, the Anthony Mason Professor, and a Scientia Professor at UNSW Law. He has held an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship, and visiting positions at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Columbia University Law School in New York, and Durham University and University College London in the United Kingdom.

He has written and edited 35 books, including Australian Constitutional Law and Theory, The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia and Human Rights under the Australian Constitution. He has appeared as a barrister in the High Court in many cases over the past two decades, including on freedom of speech, freedom from racial discrimination and the rule of law. He has also appeared in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal of Fiji, including on the legality of the 2000 coup.

As chair of the Victorian Human Rights Consultation Committee in 2005 he helped bring about Australia’s first State bill of rights, the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. In 2007 he chaired a NSW Government inquiry into Options for a New National Industrial Relations System that produced the historic referral of State industrial power over the private sector to the Commonwealth. He has also served on a High Level Advisory Group on Federal-State Relations, was a member of the NSW Government’s Panel to Examine Recall Elections and assisted the Northern Territory in its attempt to become Australia’s seventh State as a member of its Constitutional Convention Committee.

George is a well-known media commentator on legal issues. He has been a columnist for The Australian and the Canberra Times and an on-air analyst for ABC Television, and is a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald. He also reviews science fiction and fantasy books for TheWeekend Australian and Books and Arts Daily on ABC Radio National.

George was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2011: ‘For distinguished service to the law in the fields of anti-terrorism, human rights and constitutional law as an academic, author, adviser and public commentator.’

Areas of expertise

Charters of Rights, Constitutional Law, Electoral Law, Federalism, Human Rights and Social Justice, Indigenous Peoples and the Law, Law Reform, National Security and Terrorism, Public Law, Referendums.

Memberships

Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Fellow

AsiaRights Journal, Editorial Board

Australasian Parliamentary Review, Editorial Board

Australian Academy of Law, Fellow

Australian Association of Constitutional Law, Member

Australian Institute of Administrative Law, Member

Balayi: Culture, Law and Colonialism, Advisory Board

Centre on Human Rights in Conflict, University of East London School of Law, International Advisory Group

Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Member Australian Press Freedom Committee

New South Wales Bar Association, Member

New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law, Advisory Board

Public Policy, Editorial Board

Research supervision

Shipra Chordia (PhD; ‘Proportionality and the Australian Constitution’)

2005-2009 ARC Discovery Grant for 'Terrorism and Public Law after September 11'.

2005-2006 ARC Linkage Grant for 'Regional Governance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities: The Development of a Legal Framework and Practical Models to Address Discrimination and Disadvantage.' (with Larissa Behrendt).